I am the president of Metis Strategy, a CIO advisory firm that I founded in 2001. I have advised many of the best chief information officers at multi-billion dollar corporations in the United States and abroad. I've written for the Wall Street Journal, CIO Magazine, CIO Insight, Information Week and several other periodicals. I am also the author of Implementing World Class IT Strategy: How IT Can Drive Organizational Innovation (Wiley Press, September 2014) and of World Class IT: Why Businesses Succeed When IT Triumphs (Wiley Press, December 2009), a book on leading IT practices that has sold over 12,000 copies around the world. Since 2008, I have moderated a widely listened to podcast entitled “The Forum on World Class IT,” which features a wide array of IT thought-leaders, and is available at www.forumonworldclassit.com on a biweekly basis. I have been the keynote speaker at a host of corporate conferences and universities in the US, Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, Spain, China, India, Australia, and Saudi Arabia. You can reach me at peter.high [at] metisstrategy.com or on Twitter @WorldClassIT

A British MOOC Start Up With A 44 Year Old Parent

Much time and attention has been given to the MOOCs started in the US, but as I have mentioned in my interview with Mike Feerick of ALISON, the phenomenon actually first emerged in Europe. Another more recent entry to the MOOC field out of the United Kingdom is FutureLearn. Unlike other prominent MOOCs like Udacity, Coursera, and edX that feature university content, FutureLearn is not led by a former academic. Simon Nelson is a businessman, but he was a logical choice to head FutureLearn given his experience working in a variety of media fields that have been threatened and transformed by technology. As a result, Nelson has been programmed to see opportunity in the chaos.

FutureLearn also has the advantage of a 44 year old pre-cursor to the MOOCs: Open University. The university has many things in common with the MOOCs — it has an open entry policy, and the majority of courses are taken off-campus anywhere in the world. As such, Nelson has been able to work with Open University Vice Chancellor Martin Bean to learn from the decades of experiences and experiments forged, and many of them have translated well to the new format. Therefore, while FutureLearn is a new entrant to this marketplace, it stands to become a formidable one.

(An unabridged audio version of this interview is available at this link. This is the sixth article in the series on education technology innovation. To read the prior interviews with the CEOs of Udacity, Coursera, and Khan Academy, among others, please visit this link. To read future articles in this series, please click the “Follow” link above.)

Peter High: FutureLearn recently offered its first course online. What course was chosen to be the first offering, and how it was chosen?

Simon Nelson: The first course was “The Secret Power of Brands.” It was a ten-week course delivered by University of East Anglia. We chose it because it is both powerful but also accessible. We used our early MOOCs to test a range of course durations – ten, eight, six, and two weeks – to gain insight into what worked best for learners.

A second run of the course has been scheduled for February this year, along with a number of other courses that originally featured in 2013. The second run of “The Secret Power of Brands” has been re-versioned to run over six weeks.

PH: Taking a step back, how didFutureLearn begin? What was the vision for the company at the outset?

SN: We are fortunate because FutureLearn’s genesis is tied to Open University, which is 44 years old. Open University was set up to welcome anyone. It made use of the BBC airwaves. Through the creative use of technology, Open University is a clear pre-cursor to the MOOCs. FutureLearn continues in the same vein, leveraging the internet and providing an opportunity for the Open University to support other universities with its expertise in distance and online learning.

Like Open University before it, we welcome anyone who wants to learn; in our case from anywhere in the world, and we draw upon and provide access to some of the best minds from a number of world leading universities.

PH: What lessons have you and others drawn from the experience of the Open University into FutureLearn?

SN: The Open University is a world leader in distance learning and online learning. It has forged a better understanding of how people learn and created environments that maximize the learning potential of students. It really has been revolutionary. In recent years, Open University has leveraged iTunes U and YouTube in order to help disseminate its world leading content as well as its own OpenLearn platform.

When the idea to establish a MOOC arose, many thought that Open University was really already a MOOC provider. What was missing was the ability to leverage technology to foster more social collaboration, bring in together large numbers of learners to learn together and from each other. The promise of the MOOCs is to create an environment where many people can learn from each other even though they may be half a world away.

Open University’s Vice Chancellor Martin Bean saw the chance to use Open University’s distance learning expertise, technology, and production expertise to power a response to MOOC from leading UK universities. I came on board in late 2012, and we quickly recruited 11 universities. We now have 23 of the top UK universities and have begun to partner with international universities, as well, such as Monash University in Australia, the University of Auckland in New Zealand, and Trinity College in the Republic of Ireland.

We have also forged partnerships with leading UK cultural institutions such as the British Library, British Museum and British Council as well as corporate partners such as British Telecom and professional bodies such as the ACCA (Association of Certified Chartered Accountants). We would like to extend and replicate this broader partnership offering in different territories and across the cultural, media and corporate sectors.

PH: Unlike the CEOs of several of the leading US MOOCs like Udacity, Coursera, and edX, you are not an academic. Your background is in business generally and media more specifically. What was it about your background that made this a logical fit in your mind?

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